It’s all about real conversions, not rank or traffic

Let’s pretend, if only for a few moments, that your law firm has finally decided it is time to revisit your marketing and business development strategy. If you haven’t taken a critical look at how you are pitching your firm online over the past decade, it might be time to have that discussion. And don’t think you’re alone. There are plenty of Canadian law firms, big and small, that need a solid rethink on promoting themselves online.

It’s likely that any marketing negligence is only due to the fact that you’ve been fighting hard for your clients in the courtroom. Fair enough, and it’s not an uncommon story. However, when considering how lucrative the Canadian legal market is, don’t you deserve the right to be competitive amongst your peers?

So, let’s assume that you are looking at the current state of marketing affairs in your firm, and the obvious conversation topic will likely fall around, “Are the Yellow Pages still worth the money – what have they done for us lately?” and “What are we going to do about our website?”

Well, if you are going to dip your toe into the idea of a new site, chances are that a web development company has already pitched you on the idea a new site, and applying an “aggressive SEO strategy”. We’re here to tell you, tread carefully. When getting into SEO, it can all sound very impressive, grand, and expensive. In fact, very expensive, so make sure you are clear on what you are getting.

The Old Guard of SEO

The old guard in SEO pitched their value to clients on the following equation:

Search page rank leads to traffic, and traffic leads to business.

This is not necessarily true. This is only half the story if your marketing vendor (and you) is focused on page rank / site traffic as their value to you.

What is really important is:

Site Bounce Rates (folks coming to a site and turning away)

Phone Call Conversions

Inbound Email Conversions

These are the crown jewels of putting retainer money in your firm’s pocket and it is what you, as a firm and web vendor, should be most concerned with. All the page rank and traffic in the world will not generate revenues if your ability to convert traffic is out of alignment. This story rings even truer for anyone who wants to get your firm involved with Pay Per Click (PPC). What’s the point of paying for a click if the click never calls you?

What we tell our clients

At JustLaw, we tell our clients to not get distracted by Page Rank and Site Traffic. It’s a shallow view of what is really happening with your firm’s marketing dollars. We want their eyes only focused on phones ringing and inboxes filling because that’s where the real value is. We sell our solutions on a month-to-month basis, justifying our value and relevance, accordingly.

If you are going to make that push to compete in the new Canadian legal market online – demand real conversions as your criteria for value and see what vendors are willing to stand by their work on a long-term, conversion based, agreement. You’ll be surprised how many vendors will shy away. When they do, just call us.